The Zero Gays: First Draft
The Gays who are thankful for toleration and fear standing up for the Gay community.
Introduction:
The Zero Gay is a Gay person who gives zero worth to being Gay.
Most every Gay person knows of someone, or has heard of someone, who is an anti-Gay Gay person or has internalized homophobia. However, that is not the subject of this essay.
There are other self-conceptions of being Gay which are not obviously or blatantly anti-Gay and are negative and subtle. The state of being a zero Gay, since it is subtle, is more pernicious since it isn’t self-recognized by a Gay person or other Gays and so works its negative impact unimpeded.
Since the concept of internalized homophobia is often exploited opportunistically by Gays in different political factions in opposition to Gays in opposing political factions, it needs to be stated that the phenomenon of being a Zero Gay exists across the political spectrum or any other field of difference. In fact, the negative impact of being a Zero Gay would be greater in those who imagine since they are members of some progressive or radical faction and thus assume that it would be impossible for them to have issues regarding being Gay.
Description:
The Zero Gay tolerates being Gay. He has acquiesced to being Gay. He has accepted being Gay since it can’t be changed. His acceptance of being Gay is indistinguishable or nearly so, from that tolerance of the liberal.
The non-Zero Gay is glad to be Gay. The non-Zero Gay is happy to have the opportunity to live a Gay life choosing from the great possibilities of living a Gay life.
The fact that Gays seem to be born that way and it is unalterable is a relief for Zero Gays, it is often their first and more importantly often their last line of defense, since it means it wasn’t a choice and they aren’t to be blamed and so prejudice and discriminatory action against them is unreasonable.
For the non-Zero Gay, the fact you are born that way, might make him feel like he has won the lottery since only a few percent of Gay people are Gay and he was lucky get to live the Gay life that he happily lives.
The Zero Gay takes straight society to be the reference standard for all things. The Zero Gay frequently is an assimilationist Gay seeking to live as much like straight people as possible so as to minimize the difference between Gays and straights that straight people and themselves have to tolerate.
The non-Zero Gay doesn’t take straight society to be the reference standard for all things or anything, but only acknowledges that there are more of them, and that the ways of straight people are just their ways for the straight lives they live and not the lives Gays might live.
The Zero Gay feels insecure in his position within society. Given that the Zero Gay is tolerating being Gay because it is unavoidable for himself, he imagines that for straight people toleration of him is less than his toleration, fragile, and only to be expected as a very advanced self-sacrificing progressive opinion.
The Zero Gay is always concerned that his behavior and the behavior of other Gays might shatter that toleration. The Zero Gay always wants to behave to conform to the norms of straight society.
The non-Zero believing that being Gay a good thing and that it in no way diminishes him as a human being expects that others recognize him as person that is in no way diminished because he is Gay. The Gay person expects that he will be treated as a human being as a given, a basic human right and not as a favor given out of toleration. A straight person is to be considered a supporter not by tolerating Gays, but behaving in their life as if Gays have human value.
The non-Zero Gay isn’t embarrassed and worried about the behavior of some Gays that their behavior might bring judgment upon him. Rather he sees that Gays have rights to live as suits them as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others and the opinions of straight people is irrelevant in terms of moral judgement. Further, the non-Zero Gay observes that straight people have enough problems of their own and should focus on that.
The Zero Gay has a weak Gay identity. It tends to be just a sexual practice as if it is carried around in a little black bag and being assimilationist, he is just a straight person with a small difference that needs to be tolerated. The idea of idea of Gay community
The non-Zero Gay understands being Gay as an integral part of his existence and life and that he has a shared fate with millions of other Gays around the world with whom he has sympathetic feelings.
Impact on the welfare of the Gay community.
The Zero Gays are an ongoing affliction of the Gay community.
1. The first notable thing is that Zero Gays are always attacking the Gay community.
The Zero Gay is embarrassed and worried that the behavior of some Gays might bring straight judgment on all Gays including him and gets angry at those Gays who he thinks are misbehaving. The Zero Gay attacks the Gays who he thinks threaten his toleration.
They attack drag queens because the drag queens embarrass them and what will the straight people think? They are upset with the new Gay puppy phenomenon with its puppy masks, because they worry what will the straight people think? The various aspects of sexual liberation embarrass them. They think the Gay pride parades are embarrassing. Lil Nas X embarrasses them. To them Grindr is horrible.
They are always trying to assure straights that, “Not all Gays are like that.”
The Zero Gays are the source of the Respectability Gays who wish to shape the Gay community be acceptable to straight people and are constantly attacking Gays who are engaged in behavior which embarrasses them and doesn’t conform to straight norms.
The non-Zero Gay supports Gay activities that support Gay needs even if it isn’t his particular interest and doesn’t give a damn what straight people think.
The Zero Gays also attack other Gays to defend their worth with straight people in movements of which Zero Gays are also members. There is an endless torrent of abuse of Gays by Zero Gays that it is plagued by one failing or another or doesn’t accept one ideology or another. Any denunciation of the Gay community is usually taken up uncritically by some Zero Gays who will make sure that they are have no less invective against Gays than any others might have.
2. The Zero Gays give a free-passes for homophobia. This is across the political spectrum. Marxist Gays very much didn’t want to address the issue of the homophobia of the former communist regimes. Republican Gays chattered on that Barbara Bush, wife of President George W. H. Bush, was friendly towards Gays even as the Republican Party was clearly not in the interest of Gays.
Democrats and Liberals engaged in Gay baiting about Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump extensively to the point that it was Atlantic magazine said it had to stop after liberal darling Stephen Colbert said that Trump was the “cockholster of Putin.” Colbert didn’t have to apologize and gave the excuse “I have jokes; He has the launch codes.”
Colbert didn’t have to apologize because there wasn’t any substantial criticism or demands from Gays in the left/liberal/neoliberal factions or in the left/liberal/neoliberal media and straight people would be always pointing out that some Gay person had told it was okay or not serious.
Radicals and liberals are always quoting Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church when Pope Francis says one thing or another that supports their liberal or radical agenda. The only reason would be to quote someone in support of your agenda is if you think they have a credible moral authority such that the quote would give credence to your viewpoint or agenda. By quoting them you are asserting that they have a credible moral authority and also by sharing the quote the person is advocating to the readers that Pope Francis is a credible moral authority with the quote as proof.
When the author points out to people quoting Pope Francis that he is the head of a huge global actively anti-Gay organization they give a variety of excuses, but most importantly you can tell they haven’t been challenged on this by left/liberal/neoliberal gays. They are really surprised by it.
3. The Zero Gays beg for acceptance when it isn’t given. The Zero Gays where they are rejected by anti-Gay movements such as Evangelical Christianity and the Roman Catholic church are always begging for acceptance and which means assimilating to straight norms to increase the chance of acceptance. It never occurs to them to think that maybe a religion that is persistently anti-Gay is a stupid religion. It doesn’t occur to them that it is up to Christianity to figure out how they exist in a universe where Gays exist, but not for Gays to figure out how they can exist within Christianity. Zero Gays legitimize begging for acceptance when their particular favored religion or movement isn’t granting them toleration.
4. The Zero Gays don’t have a fighting spirit.
Zero Gays tend to not want to confront homophobic aggressively. It is always recommended to give those homophobic parents additional time. You are always told you have to understand their background. There is happy talk of why don’t we all get along and sunshine and butterflies.
The non-Zero Gay’s attitude towards straights that negatively judge Gays is reproach and condemnation of those straights. In response they verbally slap back much like Lil Nas X did when BET discriminated against him, making a song, “Fuck BET.”
It used to be the slogan of, “Out of the Closet and Into the Streets.” Now it is stay in the closet as long as you want and engage every little anxiety you might have and ignore your friends who have long since lost patience with your closety ways. Instead of exiting the closet the closet is now enshrined. With a therapist this can also be a cash flow for a period of time.
5. The Zero Gays don’t have a Gay community consciousness and block having a Gay agenda in a multiplicity of ways.
The Zero Gays are loath to be seen as different from straights which precludes the idea of a community of Gays who are different and so therefore would have different cultural practices, different needs, a different culture and most importantly common interests. This combined with their fear of embarrassment, their identification with straights, their prioritization of most every other agenda over Gay interests, their giving free passes for homophobia blocks the development of a Gay community pursuing its interests, developing their culture, meeting their needs, aggressively defending itself, and creating a Gay-centric group consciousness.
A Gay community will not consist of just one path for all Gays, what it is Gays pursing different paths recognizing that they have a different situation, needs, and possibilities than straights. The false claim of advocating a community of interest is equivalent to being a monolithic Gay community is rubbish.
Zero Gays in any position of leadership will be hostile to a Gay-centric movement. Organizations built by Zero Gays will not be in support of a Gay-centric movement.
The most notable way Gay-centric organizing is blocked is the constructing or remaking of organizations and redefining the community as LGBTQ+ or LGBTQQIP2SAA initialism (Has the initialism grown longer since the author last check?). When you think that being Gay is just a private different sexual difference this might make sense in that all the people who aren’t straight are to just be thrown together, including straight people who imagine they are “genderqueer.” When you don’t think that there is a Gay community or different communities having different interests, you don’t see the need for anything other than an Alphabet Soup of letters in a grab bag of sexual minorities which will be presumed to have common interests.
This appropriation of the Gay community to this initialism won’t be resisted by the Zero Gays since to them there isn’t a Gay community to defend and, in any case, they would be terrified to be denounced for something that they give little worth to.
When Gays are subsumed into a LGBTQQIP2SAA Alphabet Soup there is no Gay agenda or Gay-centric organizing to work towards the needs of the Gay community.
The assimilationist Gays see the agenda of eliminating discrimination for the LGBTQQIP2SAA as the entire agenda and social services for the individual members of the Alphabet Soup as opposed to collective community goals for Gays.
The agenda of the Respectability Gays and the Assimilationist Gays precludes those Gay needs which threaten respectability and assimilation. It also prioritizes assimilation over real needs.
The following are some examples.
The Gay community has now Gay marriage, but they still aren’t a protected class in civil rights legislation in employment and housing. When you fill out almost any application for employment, they ask you about whether you have a spouse, as well as other paperwork. For affluent Gays, Gays in strategic places in the economy, Gays which own their own businesses, that isn’t really an issue. For the vast majority of Gays which struggle in the economy for jobs and for promotion on the job this can be a real barrier. Further, marriage for straight people is continuing to decline and more and more restricted to middle to upper-class people.
The great majority, perhaps 80% of Gay people, have no real prospects of ever owning their own residence. The Zero Gays can’t even conceptualize that Gay needs for housing might be different than the needs of straights whose housing is constructed for their needs and reproduction. Given the assimilationist agenda of the LGBTQ+ likely few if any Gays conceive of Gay housing needs as being different.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) are a Gay concern since many Gays are much more sexually active than straight people with more partners than straights. Yet when the author brough up the issue of vaccines for STDs, a panicked member of the local Stonewall Democratic claimed that you can only have vaccines for viruses!
The public is told that monkeypox isn’t a Gay disease, but the cases of monkeypox are nearly 99% and men who have sex with men. It is a pandemic which was entirely avoidable. African scientists had been reporting that it was beginning to evolve into an STD in Africa and that vaccines were needed for some time now. The response to monkeypox has been sluggish and without urgency. There is neither questioning as to why this was allowed to happen in the first place or whether there is an effective plan to prevent future new STDs.
The need for an aggressive program against monkeypox hasn’t been on the agenda of the LGBTQXYZ establishment. Likely because the Respectability Gays see it as only affecting who they see as the bad Gays who aren’t monogamous, and for the LGBTQXYZ it is embarrassing and doesn’t make them seem like an appealing group, and after all in the 14 letters that make up the current initialism, Gays are only one letter.
There doesn’t seem to be an LGBTQXYZ plan or position on eliminating STDs with vaccines.
The cultural needs of Gays are neglected. On the author’s book shelf there are a couple hundred books with “Gay” or “homosexual” in the title from the 1980s. Try finding books like that now. Now it is all “queer” in the titles. There aren’t books focused on Gay interests. The series “Queer as Folk,” was made with the lead characters a straight couple, who were genderqueer, in that they identified as something or another. Yet, there wasn’t any denunciation in the LGBTQXYZ media about this cultural appropriation. Zero Gays not conceptualizing a Gay community don’t see anything wrong with this cultural appropriation and further fear criticizing it would mean condemnation by straights.
Zero Gays expect very little are prone to exalt small token actions by individuals and institutions in favor of Gays to be great and substantial actions and thus allow these token actions to be substituted for real and substantial actions by institutions and individuals. Non-Zero Gays have expectations for other than token actions.
Conclusion
Zero Gays and their motivations need to be recognized and named. By just making Gays conscious of Zero Gays, Gays will start to perceive the Zero Gays and understand the agenda and motivations of the Zero Gays and its impact on Gays.
Discussion of Zero Gays will be the start of Gays thinking about whether they are Zero Gays or non-Zero Gays and examine the question of being Gay outside the conceptualizations of the Zero Gays, and consider maybe changing how they think and live as Gays.
Understanding the agenda of the Zero Gays will be important to understanding how we restore a Gay community run by Gays for Gays.
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